This is a complete guide to the text and context of the most famous Old English poem. In this book, the specific roles of selcted individual characters, both major and minor, are assessed.

"This new translation of Beowulf aims at rendering it closely from Anglo-Saxon (Old English) verse while maintaining its salient poetic qualities and literary appeal. Martin Puhvel's translation uses vocabulary that makes the poem readable to all, preserving at the same time the poem's characteristic, somewhat austere mode of expression and the vibrant, powerful flow of its alliterative verse. The work also features informative preliminary chapters that present the basic facts, findings, and theories concerning Beowulf. In addition, the elaborate "Notes and Comments" section following the text of the translation provides detailed information relevant to it, traces the motivational forces and other influences behind significant actions and speeches in the poem, and sheds light on various thought-provoking or challenging matters and issues in it or connected with it. An annotated list of proper names, genealogies of relevant royal families, a map of the geography of Beowulf, and a short list of recommended readings are also included, making this a helpful resource for students."--Publisher's website.

This text traces the dialogic nature of the relationship between the Middle Ages and modernity. Arguing that modern beliefs in the alterity of the Middle Ages stem from the Middle Ages' own processes of self-representation, the author explores varieties of nostalgia through a wide selection of texts.

Changing the way that students think about literary history, this book rips up the rule book and brings Old English into the 21st Century.

Traces the mental processes governing the characters in the dramatic poem "Beowulf". This book focuses on the driving forces underlying the characters' actions, words, and attitudes, with special attention paid to "Beowulf's" zealous pursuit of heroic glory.

Presents eleven critical essays that analyze the structure, myth, and history of the Old English epic poem depicting the heroic deeds of Beowulf, a member of a Germanic tribe who travels to Denmark to help defeat a monster named Grendel.

The papers in this book examine the thematic, structural and aesthetic relationship between medieval English literature and a wide variety of more recent modern texts. Some of the contributors re-examine the concepts of authority and representation in Chrétien and Malory and of medieval romance and the modern novel, while Caxton's Morte Darthur is interpreted from the point of view of Norbert Elias; other focuses of interest are the love-death motif in nineteenth-century novels, the comic in contemporary British fiction, the literary representations of Arthurian characters (Galahad, Tristan, Gawain), and recent Beowulf translations. In addition, there are socio-historic and generic readings of Chaucer's Sir Thopas and of Troilus and Criseyde, of Ipomadon and Malory's Morte Darthur. Aspects of medieval heritage are uncovered in Horace Walpole, Fürst Pückler-Muskau, Georg Kaiser, A. S. Byatt, David Lodge, Fay Weldon, Iris Murdoch, the Irish novelist Eamonn Sweeney and the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, in William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer and Peter Ackroyd's recent Clerkenwell Tales. In addition, there is a translation of Karl Heinz Göller's former essay on Chancer's Troilus and Criseyde.

The author of Heaven's Mirror and The Mars Mystery presents evidence that the legend of Beowulf originated in an ancient human sacrifice ritual that was suppressed in Britain and later found expression in this compelling tale.